Aspectual Knowing

• knowers, who know
• knowings, that occur
• knowns, what is known by knowers doing their knowing.

Knowing, like living, is multi-aspectual human functioning.

We normally believe epistemology is one, that there is just one type of knowledge, of knowing (and that one is reason). But Dooyeweerd claims that each aspect has a different way of knowing. For example social knowing is different from analytical knowing, and the psychology of human memory seems yet another type. Dooyeweerd proposed that knowing occurs because of our functioning in the aspects, and each aspect gives us a distinct way of knowing. Several things follow from this:

• Distinct Aspects, or Ways, of Knowing
• Intellect, Intuition, Instinct - and Tacit Knowing
• Intuition of Two Types
• Lifeworld
• Multi-Aspectual Knowing and Intuition
• Distinct Epistemologies

• The Special Place of Analytical (Theoretical) Knowing
• Knowing is Relative
• Grounds for Certainty
• Paradox and Antinomy
• Learning: Coming to Know

• Knowing Aspectual Kernel Meaning

Distinct Aspects, or Ways, of Knowing

Aspect	Kernel Meaning	Process of Knowing	Main Distinction
Quantitative	quantity, amount	-	-
Spatial	continuous extension, space	-	-
Kinematic	movement; flowing movement	-	-
Physical	energy + mass	The fact that things stay in the state they were in until some physical force acts on them. What gives knowledge its persistence.
Biotic	life functions	The way things have grown, etc. e.g. plant bent towards light 'knows' where the light is.	Embodied v. conceptual
Sensitive	sense, feeling, emotion	Receiving stimuli and holding a memory of them. The basis for instinct (of the animal kind)?	Remembered v. forgotten
Analytical	distinguishing	Making distinctions between things, conceptualizing, and making deductions therefrom.	Theoretical v. pre-theoretical
Formative	history, culture, technology: shaping and creativity	Skills: knowing how to achieve things.	Skill v. head-knowledge
Lingual	symbolic communication	Stuff set down in symbolic form, e.g. 'knowledge' stored in books, libraries, web sites.	Explicit v. tacit
Social	relationships and roles; agreement	Networks of knowledge, shared cultural knowledge and assumptions. For a belief to be accepted as 'knowledge' rather than mere opinion there must be social agreement that it is knowledge.	Culture-specific v. cross-cultural
Economic	frugal use of resources	Managing limits on knowledge (personal and communal memories, etc.)	Efficient v. superfluous (Occam's razor)
Aesthetic	harmony, surprise, fun	Harmonising what we know with what else is known, and with what we experience in life.	Harmonious v. fragmented
Juridical	what is due; 'retribution', rights and responsibilities	Giving due weight to various pieces of knowledge and to the whole; proportion and a sense of 'perspective', an informed sense of the essence of things.	Relevant and accurate v. irrelevant, inaccurate
Ethical	self-giving love	A complete knowing of the other person? Hebrew in Genesis 4:1 the word "he-knew" for 'have intercourse with'.	Generous v. parsimonious
Pistic	vision, aspiration, commitment, creed, religion	Certainty. Committing to a belief, both the little commitments in everyday living and the large commitments for which we might lay down our lives. Also prejudice etc. Beliefs determine what counts as knowledge, often hidden; See Dooyeweerd's transcendental critique of theoretical thought. cf. Foucault's archeology of knowledge.	Momentous v. trivial Certain v. uncertain

Note: this table is of aspects of the Process of Knowing, rather than types of knowledge. That is, it suggests aspectual functioning that needs to be undertaken for a full-orbed knowing to take place.

It is clear from the table that what we call theoretical knowing is only one of many aspects of knowing, which we usually relegate to a shadowy thing called 'intuition'. But to Dooyeweerd, intuition is by no means shadowy.

Intuition, Intellect and Instinct - and Tacit Knowing

• Intellect - theoretical knowing
• Intuition - (a) multi-aspectual knowing, (b) grasp of kernel meanings of aspects.
• Instinct - 'animal' knowing, governed mainly by the sensitive aspect of sensing and feeling.

We will deal with intellect below, and focus on intuition first.

Polanyi's defined 'tacit knowing' as knowledge that cannot be explained, distinguished from explicit knowledge. This distinction is much referred to, and seems to be a intuitive notion that was awaiting a label. But the distinction is now criticised from some quarters. Dooyeweerd's notion of aspectual knowing provides a much richer account of tacit knowing.

Explication involves the analytical and lingual aspects. Since functioniing in these is not absolute, explication can never be complete, so there will always be a tacit element. However, sensory-psychic knowing is particularly difficult to explicate (e.g. riding a cycle), so is much more tacit. So is pistic knowing. In these ways, we can see that Dooyeweerd accounts for the less than sharp distinction between tacit and explicit knowledge.

Intuition of Two Types

• Law-side intuition: We grasp the kernel meanings of aspects with our intuition, and never with theoretical thought. This is because we live 'inside' them, as a fish lives in water. For example, we know and recognise justice but can never fully define it. (Theoretical thought, however, does have a role to play, in that it does 'stand over against' an aspect of the thing being studied, and thus separates it out from others.)

• Subject-side intuition: This is our intuition about concrete things, events, ideas, situations, etc. This is multi-aspectual knowing of those things, and taking into account all the aspects of those things - but in such a way that we are not aware of the aspects separately. This type of intuition is an engagement with the thing in every aspect, as opposed to setting it at a distance from us (standing over against it) in one or more aspects.

Subject-side intuition is multi-aspectual in two ways, which are expanded upon below. It involves every aspect of our knowing-activity working in harmony, and it is open to every aspect of the known thing, again harmonised.

Lifeworld

Habermas [1987:121], in discussing lifeworld, says that it is "The background of a communicative utterance is thus formed by situation definitions", and he illustrates this with an example of a junior worker at a construction site in Bavaria being sent for beer during a morning snack break. The validity of this situation rests on three types of concrete assumptions [p.122]: "element[s] of the objective world", such as that either the nearby shop is open on Mondays or the junior has a car, a "normative component of the social world", such as Bavarian cultural values (mid-morning beer would be totally unacceptable in anglo-saxon society), and a "private element of a subjective world", such as degree of thirst. All these elements of the background understanding are concrete (subject-side), and Habermas seems to take this for granted throughout his discussion of the lifeworld in [1987]. But we can also see law-side lifeworld. Behind the assumption that the junior worker goes for beer lies the aspectual norm of respect, a kernel norm of the social aspect. But in the Bavarian construction industry it takes the specific form of junior-older respect. In other cultures it might take a different form, but we all have an intuitive grasp of the importance of respect in social situations (even if we dislike it).

But he made clear that even intuition is not absolute - because nothing in created reality is absolute. Nor is it universal (across all cultures and times) because our intuition is affected by our culture, our world-view (which aspects we elevate and treat as important) and our ground motive. In this way, Dooyeweerdian intuition is not the same as Reid's notion of self-evidence.

See more on Dooyeweerd's approach to everyday life and lifeworld, and especially comparison with other view of lifeworld.

Multi-Aspectual Knowing and (Subject-side) Intuition

But, to Dooyeweerd, good knowing is not just analytical. Analytical knowing is only one valid way of knowing among others; there are different types of knowing. Analytical-logical-theoretical knowing is knowing in which the analytic aspect predominates. But there are other ways of knowing in which other aspects predominate, such as social knowing (knowing a person rather than knowing about them), centred on the social aspect, and instinct, which is centred on the sensitive aspect, and many others. In this Dooyeweerd was saying in the 1930s - 1950s what various feminist writers are now saying: welcome the various other ways of knowing beside the analytical.

But Dooyeweerd was perhaps more precise than many of today's writers, in two ways. One is that he looks at knowing as a whole, our knowing that is of our everyday living and 'naïve' experience. Our knowing, in everyday living, is one integrated whole, but it has aspects. We could use the term 'intuition' for this multi-aspectual knowing. This would at least move 'intuition' out of the realm of mystery into something rich and tangible and yet ultimately beyond our full understanding. But there is more to intuition than this; see above.

The other is that he did not abandon or reject analytical-theoretical knowing. He saw it as valid (even though he criticised our absolutization of it). It is that type of knowing that is precise and lends clarity and distinction, and that enables logic and theory. Indeed, his theory accounts for the part that we find analytical knowing and thinking plays even in our intuitive knowing.

Links with Literature

"We can continue to discuss the relationship between knowledge [multi-aspectual] and reality. ... I take the stance [pistic] that it is not possible to perceive [aesthetic] reality directly (Bateson, 1979). ... Thought [formative] can be about pigs or coconuts, but there are no pigs or coconuts in the brain; and in the mind, there are no neurons, only ideas [analytic] of pigs and coconuts. ... The name [lingual] is not the thing named, and the idea of pig is not the pig. (Bateson, 1979, p. 205). .. The indirect relationship between ideas [analytic] in a wide sense and reality can also be described in terms of the infological equation that .. states that information [lingual] is the result of an interpretation process in which data [analytic] is interpreted using the frame of reference [pistic] of the person making the interpretation. ... The frame of reference consists of the total experiences [multi-aspectual] and knowledge held by the person."

Heron [1996] also made a differentiation of types of knowledge similar to Dooyeweerd's, though more limited:

• experiential knowledge (= sensitive)
• propositional knowledge (= analytic (though actual propositions are lingual))
• skills (= formative)
• presentational knowledge (= lingual)

Distinct Epistemologies

• a different type of knowledge
• a different science
• a different method by which research should be carried out (e.g. theorem proof for maths, laboratory tests for physics, interviews and surveys for social science, etc.)
• different criteria for quality of research and knowledge.

It may be that Foucault's Regimes of Truth are similar to Dooyeweerd's aspects in this respect.

This is discussed at greater length in the page on Science.

The Special Place of Analytical (Theoretical) Knowing

But Dooyeweerd did acknowledge the special place that theoretical knowing has played, and recognised that it was a special way of knowing. He tried to account for the way in which it is special. It is special in that, when we function in the analytical aspect, we make things clear and distinct, and so can focus on them. It is special too because when we adopt an analytical stance or attitude we place the analytical aspect 'over against' the aspect of study; Dooyeweerd called this 'Gegenstand'. This is what Clouser refers to as higher abstraction, and the isolation of an aspect. Dooyeweerd developed much of his theory of theory and science by reference to this word, 'Gegenstand'. The 'standing over against' creates a 'tension' in reality, because the aspects 'resist' being pulled apart. However, Dooyeweerd's theory is not easy to understand, probably because the terms he uses are metaphors (which is why they have been placed in quotes above: 'stand over against', 'tension', 'resist'.)

Knowledge is Relative

But that does not mean there is no absolute truth as such, it is just that there is no 'truth in itself'. Rather, truth, absolute truth, is in God, and God alone. This is different from Kant's claim that we cannot know the 'Ding an Sich' (thing in itself), because to Dooyeweerd, there is no 'thing in itself'. All thingness, as well as all knowing, is relative, because both arise from the aspects (see pages on entities and existence).

Not only can we never fully know a thing, but we can never fully know the kernel of an aspect. However, Dooyeweerd tells us, the kernel of an aspect may be grasped with reasonable accuracty by means of intuition.

Grounds for Certainty

We experience certainty. The real basis of certainty is therefore not statistics and reason, but certainty comes only when we make the pistic commitment. All that statistics and reason can do is to point us in the direction of certainty.

Habermas [1972] threw light on this pistic aspect of knowing, when he spoke about 'knowledge and human interests'. In a work very like Dooyeweerd's before him, he emphasized the extra-theoretical nature of human knowledge. He gave the name 'interests' to this; Dooyeweerd spoke about religious presuppositions (note: the pistic aspect has much to do with religion). We discuss Dooyeweerd's view of the religious basis for knowing in his theory of ground motives.

Paradox and Antinomy

Antinomy is an even deeper than paradox, something that cannot even be explained by theoretical thought. Dooyeweerd was particularly interested in antinomy, and held it to be one means of distinguishing aspects from each other to determine whether a candidate aspect is a true aspect or not. Antinomy arises when we conflate two aspects, that is try to merge them. The famous example is the Hare and Tortoise.

Learning: Coming to Know

If we think of what we include within learning, we find: coming to experience, coming to understand, practicing, the storing away of information, the storing away of memories, memorizing, the taking in of new information and linking that meaningfully with what we had there before, being transformed in various ways, changing our habits, changing our attitudes, changing our world views, and many other things.

There seem to be many aspects of learning:

• sensitive - storing away as memory traces (including long-term, short-term and sensory memories); also learning by practice as in a sport
• analytic - learning what is important
• formative - structuring what we take in, linking it with previously learned things; also learning of skills
• lingual - learning by rote; also what is stored away in written material.
• social - learning cultural connotations
• aesthetic - harmonizing what we learn with all else we know
• pistic - commitment to, trusting, what we have learned.

This is, of course, very similar to the idea that there are many aspectual ways of knowing, above.

Elsewhere, we discuss whether learning is a separate aspect.

Knowing Aspectual Kernel Meaning

Coming to know the kernel meaning and normativity of an aspect might take several forms:

• The first part of our intuitive grasp involves this direct, immediate experience. This is a component of our tacit knowledge. Of example, we do and experience justice at a deep level (kernel meaning of juridical aspect. But this does not by itself convey awareness of this meaning or normativity.
• To become aware of it, we must function analytically to form concepts of it, so it becomes explicit to us, differentiated from the meaning of other aspects. Thus we become aware that we experience justice, and gain some awareness of what justice is distinct from, for example, sociality or logic (of the social and analytical aspects). This is likely to be what we might call intuitive grasp of aspectual meaning. It is not yet explicated, but we are aware of it.
• After this we can explicate it, trying to express it in language. This involves lingual functioning.
• This enables us to share it with others (social functioning), and alter our appreciation and understanding of it by what others also share.
• That leads to a common, explicit but sometimes informal shared understanding of the meaning of an aspect.

Because of the fallible (non-absolute) aspectual functioning involved in getting here after the immediate engaged experience of the aspect, none of our aware intuition or informal understanding can be treated as in any way an absolute truth.

Theoretical understanding of aspectual meaning is even more fallible. It involves formalised processes of theoretical thought, in which we first differentiate objects from background, differentiate aspects from the objects that exhibit them, and then abstract an aspect as such from any and all objects. (Clousers's 'higher abstraction'). All these processes involve not only fallible analytical functioning in several stages, but also a Gegenstand relationship. (For more on this, see Dooyeweerd's transcendental critique.) The upshot of this is that theoretical understanding of aspectual kernel meaning and normativity must always be treated as very tenuous.

Possible Research

References

Acknowledgements

This is part of The Dooyeweerd Pages, which explain, explore and discuss Dooyeweerd's interesting philosophy. Questions or comments are very welcome.

Compiled by Andrew Basden. You may use this material subject to conditions.

Written on the Amiga with Protext.

Created: 3 March 2003 from knowledge.html (17 July 2001) and asp.epist.html (10 July 2001). Last updated: 7 March 2003 made links all relative. 10 March 2003 added paradox and antinomy from asp.prose.html. 17 March 2004 example text re aspects of knowledge. 16 April 2004 learning. 26 January 2005 more on III, and added name-label 'intuition'; intuition non-abs. 22 April 2005 link to everyday. 11 July 2005 rewrote and rearranged in response to comments by Chris van Haeften, acknowledged. 21 February 2008 moved iii to front, and rewrote it to cover two types of intuition, and two sides to lifeworld. 19 March 2008 link to Reid. 10 July 2009 Heron 96. 12 October 2010 new headings + contents + kernels section. 23 October 2010 social agreement about knowledge; link to Foucault; ways or aspects. 9 October 2012 added distinctions about knowledge in each aspect, and placed table of ways of knowing first. 3 September 2015 corrected '../'; rid counter; new .nav.